Top executives across every industry agree that data is a top competitive differentiator for their organization. Integrating disparate data sources by leveraging APIs allow enterprises to successfully govern the quality of data, maintain a single source of truth, and generate a 360-degree view of customers. In the last decade or so, REST APIs were adopted as the basic framework for application integration.

Top executives across every industry agree that data is a top competitive differentiator for their organization. Integrating disparate data sources by leveraging APIs allow enterprises to successfully govern the quality of data, maintain a single source of truth, and generate a 360-degree view of customers. In the last decade or so, REST APIs were adopted as the basic framework for application integration.

A new set of audiences—data scientists, data engineers, BI analysts―have emerged and need access to raw data from their favorite BI tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, Excel, Cognos and more. Focused on application integration alone, APIs cannot meet the analytics needs of the organization because they are designed for pace, not for analyzing trends. Your BI team and data engineers need tabular data to run complex SQL queries on enterprise data. In their research report, Gigaom observes how enterprises can strengthen their data strategy by building Data APIs on top of their enterprise APIs.

Time to move from APIs to Data APIs

ODBC and JDBC are most popular Data APIs that IT organizations will be familiar with. Although, most ODBC and JDBC connectors talk directly to databases and most of them issue SQL queries in the database’s native dialect, things don’t have to work that way. Even a set of APIs can be translated to behave like a Database / Data API. The translated APIs are then no longer shallow—they can expose raw data in a BI-friendly manner.

Abstracting the REST API using Data APIs (the Database metaphor) is a popular trend that many IT teams are deploying in their organizations to access their business logic from the BI stack. If this sounds complicated, well, it can be if you don’t do it the right way.

Three ways to get started with your Data API journey:

Give direct access to the database: While this gives you SQL (ODBC/JDBC) access to the database, you lose access to the business logic developed over the years. Custom procedures can be used as a workaround, but that’s not going to be easy. Moreover, sharing database credentials can lead to a security breach where you can never recover.

Build Custom Data APIs: You can always reconstruct an ODBC/JDBC based SQL query by custom coding against the regular enterprise APIs. However, it is an extremely resource-intensive task to create or maintain such a standard. And end of the day, the custom connectors you develop will need many more tweaks before they start working with all the major BI tools.

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Partner with the Data API Pioneers: You can simply partner with Progress DataDirect, which offers a robust SDK, known as OpenAccess, to quickly build custom ODBC or custom JDBC over your enterprise APIs in just two hours. This whitepaper on SQL access for enterprise APIs explains how you can build custom Data APIs in days, rather than months or even years. Our data experts will be glad to develop a personalized Data API solution for your company.

Progress DataDirect: Over Three Decades of Expertise with Data APIs

Your organization already trusts Progress technology, but you may not have realized that Progress DataDirect has long been a leader in data connectivity solutions. We are the co-founders of the ODBC spec and a key-member of the JDBC spec – we wrote the book when it comes to Data APIs. Over 350+ ISVs and 10,000+ enterprises rely on us for their connectivity needs. Our connectors are even embedded by 8 of the 9 BI leaders, helping them deliver a seamless experience for their end-users. DataDirect brings you OpenAccess, the same technology that our commercial connectors were built on, so that you can build world-class custom Data APIs

Partner with Progress and Get Ready for the Data API Journey

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